How I love now

There's a poem that I haven't taught for three years that I had to teach today. Last time I taught it I was with my husband and I didn't really understand it. Today, I do.

Love After Love

The time will come

when, with elation

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

.

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

.

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

.

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

.

Derek Walcott

My class didn't understand it and for one dangerous moment I felt the tears dancing behind my eyes as I read it. Because this poem speaks volumes about who I am these days and how I live now. This blog is over a year old but the original posts - the first steps towards catharsis - date from this time last year. At that time there were suggestions from my ex that he might want to come back and I was very confused. I would never have believed the prophesy that 'The time will come' that I would feel at one with myself. That this would feel like my house, and mine alone, with no ghosts hovering.

I wouldn't have known that I can 'love again the stranger who was your self'. I've changed so dramatically in that one year: I'm confident, I'm a lot more attractive and, heck, I'm sexier too. Metaphorically and physically I've taken 'down the love letters from the bookshelf, / the photographs, the desperate notes'. I've thrown it all out. It doesn't clutter my home, my life or my psyche.

If you are someone who is on the first steps towards experiencing love after love, or if you are faltering on your path, I can tell you that this poem is full of truth and power. You will 'give your heart back to itself'.

Sit. Feast on YOUR life x

In Amalfi with no Pradas

When I was a student my favourite film adaptation was 'A Room with a View' and my favourite chapter title was 'In Santa Croce with no Baedeker'. In the chapter Lucy loses her chaperone, Miss Bartlett, and ends up in the cathedral, Santa Croce without a guidebook to advise her which are the very important Giotto frescoes and which are not. There she has the start of an unsuitable romantic encounter.

E.M Forster's description of the foibles of Edwardian travellers in Italy has crept into my mind a few times over the past week as I am in Italy too. I'm not in Florence but in Sorrento. However, I'd love Forster's archness when writing about British tourists here. They are all discernible by their dress: why is it that as soon as a Briton leaves the country they believe that they need to wear khaki trousers with a multitude of pockets and ugly walking shoes? Just to walk round a city? And why must their handbag be traded for a rucksack and a litre of water in one hand? The rebellious part of me has chosen a gorgeous and impractical blue Italian handbag for the daytime and I've been wearing cute sparkly sandals and proper clothes. Do I look Italian? No. Do I look like I should be on safari rather than walking down a shopping street? I sincerely hope not.

But travelling in Italy is sometimes quite like becoming single again. There are a lot of reverses and alterations which you just have to deal with. One day we set off to visit Amalfi and instead visited Positano and then came back. Yesterday, we planned to visit Amalfi but there were 300 people queuing for a bus that carried 67 so we wandered Sorrento and sunbathed instead. Today we planned to visit the Archeological Museum of Naples but when we got to the station all the trains were cancelled so we ended going up to Amalfi finally. Due to the notorious nature of Naples we had emptied our bags of mobiles, cameras, credit cards and cash and were only carrying the bare minimum. However, our diversion to Amalfi meant I turned up in one of the most chic locations on earth wearing 5 euro sunglasses rather than my beautiful, and thoroughly cherished, Prada sunglasses (I'm not telling you what they cost - suffice to say BOTH of my last cars were traded in for a substantially lower sum...). I'd pictured myself wandering around Amalfi in my fit black dress, sparkly sandals, gorgeous handbag and Pradas. But that was not to be. However, I have to say that life is what you make it and I completely loved the town even if I was in Amalfi with no Pradas, which is just a modern version of being in Santa Croce with no Baedeker.